It's about the food, but it's really about two girls who like hashbrowns too much.

travel

After eating nothing but conference food for three days I could hear the soft calls of breakfast potatoes. And eggs. And mimosas.

I conducted an audit of my surroundings by Googling, “breakfast place near me.” The West Egg Cafe came in at 1.5 miles away. I strapped on my Chocos and headed down the road, listening to Caroline Smith’s rad album on the way.

I knew from their website the West Egg Cafe was a little hipper than the breakfast places I favor, but it had a nice, vintage vibe that I jived with. When you walk into the place there’s a counter for ordering coffee or drinks to go. There’s a couch and coffee table set up like your rich friend’s house by the door. It was dead when I got there on a Wednesday night, so I grabbed a seat at the bar.

The wait staff at West Egg has a bored, post-grad, hipster vibe. I ordered a mimosa almost immediately, but it took about ten minutes before someone took my order. The mimosa was amazingly strong, and the breakfast menu was small but creative. I ordered the black bean cakes and eggs with potatoes… and immediately regretted not ordering grits. Momentary lapse in judgement, but we can’t be perfect all the time.

Black Beans Cakes & Eggs at West Egg Cafe, Photo Credit Ash Bruxvoort

When they set my food out in front of me I was in awe. The eggs were over easy perfection. The black bean cakes were perfectly spicy, and reminded me of vegetarian sausage. The salsa and sour cream was the perfect amount of thickness. My mouth is watering just writing this. Holy crap that was good.

And since I have obsessed over potatoes so much, I will just tell you that the potatoes at West Egg were beyond satisfying, heavily seasoned home fries. They were actually probably incredible, but I was so distracted by how good everything else was I can barely remember.

It was so good I took a picture of it and Tweeted it out to the entire world (or however many followers I have on Twitter) because I wanted them to be jealous of my amazing food.

In one of the few social interactions I had with the staff at West Egg, the best one was with the guy who came to check on me after I got my food.

“Everything okay?”

“Uh YEAH!”

I inhaled every bite of that meal and thought to myself… I must make this when I get home.

It was a rainy Sunday morning in Kansas City. We were coming down from the shenanigans of the night before, which involved seeing Arcade Fire at the Starlight Theatre followed by some chill friendly activities while waiting for a cab for an hour. Needless to say, breakfast potatoes were necessary the next morning. We originally intended to go to the Woodswether Cafe, after Liz did a quick Internet search for “best hashbrowns Kansas City.” After driving around an industrial and kind of sketch area for a good thirty minutes, we decided to head over to the Westport area we drove through the day before. Liz has since admitted that it clearly states on TripAdvisor that the Woodswether Cafe is closed, but we’re giving her a pass on that one.

We found The Corner Restaurant just before it really started to poor rain. Liz, Ash (that’s me) and our companion for the weekend, Julie, stood awkwardly outside while some crazy street fighter named Adam accosted the waiting patrons of The Corner Restaurant. Then Liz and Julie left me standing outside with this Adam guy. He shouted, “Hey, you like the Grateful Dead (I was wearing a Grateful Dead shirt)?!? Do you also like other bluegrass styles?!?” Coincidentally, this was almost the exact same thing a guy I liked (also named Adam) once said to me, and it was a huge turn on. I did not respond to street fighter Adam, however, and inched behind a telephone pole I thought I could blend into.

Probably should have ignored that first Adam too, come to think of it.

So there we were, getting accosted by this Adam street fighter guy, just waiting patiently for our turn to be seated, when it starts to downpour.

We run into the crowded restaurant, which is exactly the kind of the crowd you want to be in the day after drinking heavily at an Arcade Fire show, especially when there is no coffee. I repeat, there was no coffee, which doesn’t really bother me. Well, except for when Liz gets that murdery I must have coffee glare on her face. Then it becomes sort of problematic. The host must have seen that face too, because he gave her what was literally the last cup of coffee they had.

We all eyed a very hot, very bearded, very tall waiter and secretly hoped we would be lucky enough to have him pour us mimosas. Actually, it wasn’t secretly because subtle we are not. Liz actually said, I hope we get that guy. We didn’t get the hot bearded waiter. The Breakfast Gods were not shining upon us that morning. As soon as we sat at the table I made note of the adorable napkins… and pretentious tiny water glasses sitting next to them. I mean, these were basically shot glasses. Did I mention we drank a lot the night before?

So as we sat there looking over the menu, discussing how it’s dumb that guys play games because if guys didn’t play games girls wouldn’t have to play games. I mean seriously, a dude complains to me about how girls play games and I wanna be like, dude are you fucking kidding me. Anyway, we were having some pretty intense girl talk when we actually decided to order some food. The Corner Restaurant’s menu isn’t ginormous, but there’s plenty to choose from. Turns out they also work with local farmers and producers, which I dig. I ordered the veggie scramble-ful with home potatoes (roasted tomatoes, carmelized onions, roasted bell peppers, and spinach–no mushrooms for me, blegh), sourdough toast and a mimosa (it was Sunday!). Liz ordered the tomato and avocado eggs benedict, hashbrowns and an orange juice (Liz is sups responsible… or possibly hungover). Julie ordered a salad, at which point we basically ignored her for the rest of the meal because, dude, breakfast. (I considered ordering the Root Beer Float french toast, but decided I couldn’t get ice cream for breakfast. I later regretted this decision.)

The food took a little while to come, and the mimosa took forever to come. I would not go to The Corner Restaurant if you’re in a hurry to get somewhere. The atmosphere is nice and hip, and the clientele at 11 AM tends towards the younger, hipsterish crowd. This isn’t really our bag, we’re more into greasy spoon diners, but it was still a righteous way to spend our last few hours in Kansas City.

Veggie Scramble-ful with breakfast potatoes and sourdough toast

When our food came I was a little surprised to see they serve ketchup in little containers, which isn’t the most effective way to get ketchup on your breakfast potatoes. My eggs were okay, but there wasn’t any cheese which makes it kind of hard for all the parts to stick to each other. The breakfast potatoes were pretty good and the toast was excellent.

Tomato & Avocado Eggs Benedict with Hashbrowns

Liz here, Breakfast Babe numero two. As Ash so lovingly pointed out earlier, I was fairly hungover for this meal. What can I say, Jack Daniels spoke to me the night before and I listened. Anyway, the first thing that struck me as awesome about The Corner Restaurant was the free coffee available for the people waiting for their table. As someone who has a crippling caffeine addiction, I found this very thoughtful. There is nothing worse than waiting for a table at a restaurant with a pounding headache due to caffeine withdrawal and/or because of a hangover. I unfortunately was suffering from both simultaneously that morning and wasn’t able to take much in at the restaurant except the crazy shirtless man running around outside talking about street fighting and ‘honey bun’ hair styles. However, after I got my pity cup of coffee I was much more observant and quickly became smitten with the charm of the place that Ash described.

For my meal I chose the Tomato & Avocado Eggs Benedict. I mean, who could really resist avocados. For breakfast. Really. They are beautiful green gifts from the gods of deliciousness that make everything taste amazing. Combined with eggs and hollandaise sauce this dish was sure to be a hit—and for the most part it was. I thought it was a little cold when I started eating it, but I was so hungry I hardly paid much attention to this small factor. I was pretty impressed with the flavor of the dish, it was everything Eggs Benedict should be—plus avocado.

Now for what breakfast is all about—hash browns. The hash browns at The Corner Restaurant are good. Not amazing, but satisfying. I like my hash browns to be in a sheet so you get an optimal crispy to fluffy potato-y goodness ratio. These were all jumbled up in a pile, but still had noticeable crispiness that is essential for good hash browns. They needed a little extra salt, and were a little bland without the addition of ketchup. As Ash mentioned in her bit, the ketchup was served in small metal cups that made it practically impossible to get it on the hash browns in an efficient and evenly spread fashion.